Federal Racketeering Charges

I have a story that unfortunately involves maths - a tale that when spun will reflect the true state of health care in this country. It's a story that isn't being told, isn't being acknowledged, and quite frankly, is making me sick to even think about it. So I'm going to share this story with you, dear readers, in hope that you also get sick.

I hope you have insurance.

Here's the story: a friend of mine recently started having these weird pains in her upper abdomen. She went to her doctor, who referred her to a specialist, who took an ultrasound of her entire chest area and decided that she was fine. The pains went away on their own. Diagnose as you will.

Either way, happy ending - right?

Except she then got her insurance bill, which she shared with me today, and which immediately gave me chest pains as I read it. The bill stated, quite clearly, that the hospital put a price tag of $2,700 on the ultrasound, an event which took all of 5 minutes to unfold (I know, because I took her and waited in the waiting room and didn't even get 3 paragraphs into a magazine article before she came bouncing out, saying she was ready to go drink beer).

The insurance bill then went on to say that the "negotiated price" for this event - for the insurance company - was $700. The insurance company then stated that my friend had to pay nothing - they covered this procedure - which is what we pay insurance premiums for in the first place.

Happy ending, right?

Wrong.

Let me be clear - this means that the hospital bean counters and the insurance company bean counters agreed that this procedure, which would cost you nearly three thousand dollars if you came off the street and asked for it - would be worth a quarter of that when payed for by the insurance company.

Let me restate this again, just to be clear. The hospital stated that the cost for this preventative measure - something that is designed to ensure the health of the hospital's patients - was a lot. The insurance company charges those same patients a monthly fee to ensure that they don't have to pay this amount. People who pay  insurance companies a monthly fee don't have to pay anything, as they have worked out a deal with the hospital to ensure this.

Or, put another way, you run a convenience store on some corner in some city. Doing so, you run the risk that hoodlums from the area may or may not decide on any given day to come into your store and randomly smash the items you sell with a baseball bat, rendering them unsalable. This, of course, would impact your profits negatively, and directly affect your ability to buy a Porsche for yourself. Or, you would have to raise your prices, and your customers would suffer. The Mob comes along, and guarantees that if you pay them a monthly fee, they will insure against hoodlum debauchery.

Nevermind how they can do this, they just can.

That, in Federal Government lexicon, is called "Racketeering". And it's punishable by many, many years in jail.

So can somebody please explain to me why this is legal when it's called "Insurance"? And worse still, why are we still even considering electing people to office that condone this type of behavior?

I'll go ahead and answer this for you. It's because everyone that runs for office is somehow oblivious to the fact that this is actually illegal behavior. The Republicans don't give a shit if people have to pay $700 or $2,700 for a procedure that might save their lives, as long as businesses don't have to pay out of pocket for it. And Democrats are trying to pass laws that require everyone to have protection, not thinking about who pays for it or whether it's really even needed or even legal in the first place.

We are the Greatest Country in the World, but also the last civilized country left that structurally links healthcare to our jobs. And instead of figuring out how to take care of the people that live next door to us, our organized government is arguing over who is responsible for paying the racketeering costs to keep the healthcare system running at its current high level of profit.

What the fuck politicos, do you think we're stupid????

Hmmmm. Apparently you all do.

Aaaaaand, welcome to the 2012 Presidental debates. It's an exercise in futility, so no wonder we fall back on black and white issues like Gay Marriage or Abortion when we decide who should be in charge. Because the truth is that we need to dump them all and find someone who is willing to call things like they are and fix healthcare for real and force the NFL to play even if the players and owners can't agree on whether a game is worth 3 or 4 million dollars to those who play it.

I give up. I'll be in Mexico if you need me...

Weird, Science.

Weird Science is, actually and probably, one of the worst and most cheesiest (albeit classic) movies ever made, ever, even compared to other 80's movies. Regardless, there is a lot to be learned from this movie, and most of that can benefit the female sex with regard to dealing with the male gender. I recently wrote a blog entry about how men can best win the affection of women, but so little is written about the opposite, mostly because it has little to do with anything except beer and blowjobs.

The truth is, everything women need to know about men can be learned from watching this (otherwise horrible, honestly) movie. Here are the top 10, for your convenience:

10) We want to feel like you will do everything we tell you to. And even if you do, we're still going to want other chicks more who won't do anything we want them to.

9) We like it when you cook for us.

8) Dressing in a man's shirt (while cooking) is one of the most sexiest things a woman can do.

7) "I am shitting in my pants!" is one of Robert Downey Jr's best lines in a movie, ever.

6) Women with British accents are really, really, really hot.

5) We will never understand that people will like us for who we are, not for what we can give them. But at the same time, we just want you to like us for who we are, not for what we can give to you.

4) A woman who reiterates to other people that we don't stand for baloney is a keeper, even if she's a bit mannish. Or old enough to be someone's grandmother.

3) We want you to push us past our comfort zones by taking us to nightclubs in which we don't belong, throwing parties in our house even though it'll get us in trouble, and standing up to people (like our parents) who we, for whatever reason, can't stand up to. But we'll still fight bikers when push comes to shove.

2) Even if we create you by connecting a Barbie to a car battery and hacking into an Air Force mainframe, we're still going to be more interested in impressing the alpha guys in the room than you, even if you do (or are) everything else in this list.

1) A woman who's primary goal is to make us a better man by bringing out our self-confidence and courage is the best kind of woman in the world. But she probably used to be a Barbie hooked up to a car battery, brought to life by an Air Force mainframe.

Bonus Observations:

- Ilan Mitchell-Smith is a lame replacement for Matthew Broderick.

- Mesh shirts used to be bad-ass looking on dudes, in the 80's. Now, they just look gay.

- Missiles are funny because they are shaped like penises. Doubly so during the Cold War.

I Love Family Guy

Song of the Sausage Creature

They say, and they would be right, that every time you ride a motorcycle you are taking your life into your hands. A more accurate statement, perhaps, would be to say "Every time you ride a motorcycle on roads where people also drive cars or trucks you are taking your life into your hands". In other words, motorcycles don't kill people, people in cars kill people on motorcycles.

And deer. Deer kill people on motorcycles as well.

I bring this up today only because earlier this evening I came within a cunt hair of being t-boned by an older woman driving a Ford Explorer.

Side note: does "cunt hair" even have meaning anymore now that everyone shaves their pubes? I don't know. I just wanted to see how many times I could legitimately use the word "cunt" in my post and not piss anyone off. Perhaps I've already failed.

Here's how it all went down. I was riding along one of the many country back roads we have here in lovely Virginia, inhaling the sweet smell of a beautiful and sunny Spring evening and ruminating on how happy I am to be living in this part of the country. I approached a road onto which I had to make a left turn to get home. I applied my turn signal, downshifted, and started to execute said turn. The aforementioned old bag broad lady woman was pulling out from that side road into the main road I was on. We were both taking left turns. I had the right of way, as I was on a main thoroughfare and she was at a stop sign. I watched her (as if in slow motion) look left, look right, and look left again, and I immediately and intuitively knew that she didn't even know I was there. It was as if she looked right through me.

As a side note, when I bought my Harley I knew there were two add-ons I was going to be purchasing as soon as I could afford them. One is a custom paint job, to replace the traditional black and classic logo paint with something more befitting my personal taste, like neon blue skulls in a black vortex or an exploding Harley logo. The other is straight exhaust pipes, the sole purpose of which is to lessen the muffling effect that exhaust pipes have on the engine noise. Which is another way of saying "they make motorcycles obscenely loud".

I bring this up now not to build suspense (you already know she didn't hit me because otherwise I'd be in traction and unable to write this now), but to explain why it is that motorcyclists spend their hard-earned money to make their beloved machines obnoxiously loud. It's not because we are attention whores. Ok, it's not JUST because we are attention whores. It's because people who drive cars and trucks just don't seem to be able to SEE motorcycles on the road. So it's not a bad idea to give them something to HEAR, so they don't run us over.

Like I said, I don't have straight pipes yet. So my motorcycle is "stock Harley" loud, which is to say it sounds great, but you won't hear it unless you are standing next to it or driving behind me.

This lady didn't hear me and she didn't see me, and so she started to pull out into my lane, with me directly in her path, as I was in the middle of my turn.

If you've never driven a motorcycle, the way you turn is you execute a controlled "falling down" maneuver. You lean the bike in the direction you want to turn, and the acceleration of the engine (contributing to centrifugal force) keeps man and machine from lying on their side. Slowing or stopping when in this state means that vertical no longer can be a word used to describe you. "Road Pancake" might become more accurate.

So having to react to someone slamming into you from any direction when you are in the middle of a 90 degree turn is a bad thing.

Fortunately she saw me when she was about a foot away from my highway peg and slammed on the brake. Fortunately there was nobody else driving in either direction on the main road. Fortunately I've been through this before, and straightened out the bike, slammed on my own brakes, and prepared to launch myself off of the machine away from the car - preferring to sacrifice my beloved machine than get pancaked between it and the front bumper of her piece of shit SUV.

We both stopped - inches away from each other. I closed my eyes, breathed a deep sigh of relief, and revved my engine and finished my turn and kept on my path.

As I rode past her I looked up to see her reaction. I half-expected her to be pissed, or flipping me off, which would have been what would happen back in Massachusetts, New York, or Connecticut. Instead, she looked horrified, hands over her mouth, eyes wide open.

Which was the right reaction to have, and I would have had it too, if I didn't have another 15 miles to ride before I could pull my bike off into the relative safety of my apartment complex parking lot. I didn't have time or the luxury of flipping out, I needed to concentrate on driving.

Because nobody else seems to be...

P.S. - For those who don't know, the title of this post is a reference to Hunter S. Thompson's epic "Song of the Sausage Creature" article about riding speed bikes (when they were called "cafe racers").

Fear is the Mind Killer.

Fear is an interesting human emotion. It's not just all about monsters in the closet or falling from great heights or being sat on my extremely fat white girls either. In fact, fear has one commonality, regardless of what it is you think you're afraid of. What we are always really afraid of is loss.

We fear losing a winning streak. Or our innocence. Or our health. Our wealth. Our lives.

Frequently, in a human twist of irony, loss is what helps us get past our fears too. Show me a truly fearless man, and I will show you a person with absolutely nothing to lose. And everything to gain.

I realized today, immediately after being stung by a wasp on the steps outside my apartment, that over the past 30 years I had developed a fear of stinging insects. And the only reason I had was because I had gone 30 years without being stung. Simple. I never had a traumatic experience with a yellow jacket, never saw someone die in my arms because they had an allergic reaction to a sting, nada. I just hadn't been stung in a long-ass time.

And every year that I became further removed from what it actually felt like to be stung by a wasp (I didn't enjoy it, but overall wasn't really all that bad), The more I feared that it might happen again.To the point where I probably acted pretty ridiculous if a bee was nearby, irrational thought kicking in and deciding for me that the more I moved about the less likely it was that I'd get stung.

But why? Who cares? I'm not allergic to bees, and like I said, it's not an enjoyable experience, but it wasn't so bad.

It's the fear of loss of innocence more than anything, I think. That pristine record of 30 years without a sting (which is a good thing, but not what I strive for in life) broken. The fear of a lovely afternoon outdoors marred by a little pain and discomfort and swelling, perhaps. The fear that I'd scream like a little girl and flail my arms about helplessly if I ever did get stung again (for the record, I swore - man-style - and kept on doing what I was doing).

It can't be that I had been afraid of being stung by bees, I'm way too manly for that...